Upper Ten Thousand by no means monopolize these personal advantages.
At the hour of "dress parade" you cannot walk five steps without
encountering a face well worthy of a second look. Occasionally, too, you
catch a provokingly brief glimpse of a high, slender instep, and an
ankle modeled to match it. The fashion of Balmorals and kilted kirtles
prevails not here; and maids and matrons are absurdly reluctant to
submit their pedal perfections to the passing critic. Even on a day when
it is a question of Mud _v._ Modesty, you may escort an intimate
acquaintance for an hour, and depart, doubting as to the color of her
hosen. But, conceding the justice of Baltimore's claim, and the constant
recurrence of a more than _stata pulchritudo_--I am bound to confess
that, with a single exception, I saw nothing approaching _supreme_
perfection of form or feature.

The exception was a very remarkable one.

I write these words, as reverently as if I were drawing the portrait of
the fair Austrian Empress, or any other crowned beauty: indeed, I always
looked on that face, simply as a wonderful picture, and so I remember it
now. I have never seen a countenance more faultlessly lovely. The _pose_
of the small head, and the sweep of the neck, resembled the miniatures
of Giulia Grisi in her youth, but the lines were more delicately drawn,
and the _contour_ more refined; the broad open forehead, the brows
firmly arched, without an approach to heaviness, the thin chiselled
nostril and perfect mouth, cast in the softest feminine mould, reminded
you of the First Napoleon. Quick mobility of expression would have been
inharmonious there. With all its purity of outline, the face was not
severe or coldly statuesque--only superbly serene, not lightly to be
ruffled by any sudden revulsion of feeling; a face, of which you never
realized the perfect glory till the pink-coral tint flushed faintly
through the clear pale cheeks, while the lift of the long trailing
lashes revealed the magnificent eyes, lighting up, slowly and surely, to
the full of their stormy splendor. It chanced, that the lady was a
vehement Unionist, and "rose," very freely, on the subject of the war.
Sincere in her honest patriotism, I doubt if she ever guessed at the
real object of her opponent in the arguments which not unfrequently
arose. If there be any indiscretion in this pen-and-ink sketch from
nature, I should bitterly regret the involuntary error, though its
subject, to the w